WINOOSKI — By the time we ordered the seven-hour lamb, we’d been at Misery Loves Co. an hour and a half, eating things like sea urchin and pig’s tail. By the time we happily devoured the lamb and polished off pistachio pound cake, we’d put in almost half the time eating as the lamb spent roasting.

Chef/co-owner Nathaniel Wade and his cohorts get credit for creating this terrific, fun, nonstop meal. Wade gets big points from me, as well, for his description of the lamb: As spot-on as the meal.

“We roast a leg of lamb for a very long time at a very low temperature,” Wade, 37, said. “Until it creates a texture that’s elegant, to say the least. You breathe on it and it melts.”

As he spoke, Wade was preparing gnocchi du pain — a bread-based gnocchi studded with charcuterie bits, Parmesan cheese and herbs. These he would boil before supper and sear to order, served with braised kale and puree of rutabaga. It’s Misery Loves Co.’s take on a “super-old meal from the peasanty food triangle” of Italy, France and Germany, Wade explained.

Elegant to peasant, nose to tail, small plates to meat and three sides, Misery Loves Co. has a certain flair with these styles — and more. I was nearly as taken by the music (though I’d heard it all before) as the meal (though I had not eat it all before).

The restaurant likes to play full albums. Our long meal coincided with two excellent and long albums: Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” and Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life.”

Sampling small plates

As for the lingering meal, this is what happens when you avail yourself of numerous “small plates,” a defining feature of Misery’s supper menu. Photographer Glenn Russell and I had a couple rounds of small plates. Not to brag, but I outlasted Glenn and could’ve gone one more round.

Glenn started the meal with his own touch of braggadocio, announcing as we attempted to share sea urchin nestled in jar of panna cotta, topped with dashi broth: “When I was a kid, I ate them live and raw on the docks of Palermo.” At that point, I yielded the final spoonful of sea urchin to him.

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Few people, I’m betting, can match the small-plate input of Richard Cianci, 57, a regular. Cianci is a computer programmer who lives in Montpelier. He travels north to Misery Loves Co. once or twice a week, a routine that began in December, when the small restaurant in Winooski started serving supper three nights a week.

It’s a quicker trip north than Cianci used to make: Since Misery opened, Cianci has replaced restaurant trips to Montreal , he said.

“I tend to eat among the small plates,” Cianci said. “I like to try a lot of different things when I eat out. You can get so many interesting flavors and textures. I like the fact that I can get exotic treats like octopus and pigs’ tails here, or you can get a big bowl of french fries.”

On a recent Friday night, Cianci signaled the end of his meal with an amaro drink. “That means I’m done,” he said. “I have a lot to digest.” He also had a bill of about $150 — impressive for one man eating at a bar, with a view of plaid-shirted chefs turning out meals.

The small plates give the kitchen staff a chance to explore, the chefs say. More standard meals — fried chicken and sides — meet the needs of conventional diners.

“We understood after working around the area that there are some very adventurous diners in Chittenden County,” said chef/co-owner Aaron Josinsky. “That allows us to do these plates that we’re interested in. We also realize that sometimes people want to have a large piece of protein and three portions on the side.”

There are staples among the small plates, and others that change daily. Bobby fries, Misery’s smoked meat poutine, and pork buns are regular items, Josinsky said. “We haven’t become slaves to them,” he said, “but they capture guests for us.”

The restaurant, which opened four and a half months ago in Winooski, is owned by Josinsky and his wife, Laura Wade, who are parents of a baby daughter, Edith. The third owner is Wade’s brother, Nathaniel Wade.

Laura Wade runs the front of the house and manages the business side of the restaurant and the beverage service. Nathaniel Wade and Josinsky are chefs who have worked in restaurants since they were teenagers, culminating in kitchens at Shelburne Farms and Bluebird Tavern.

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Nathaniel Wade is a multi-state high school dropout, including quitting Burlington High School. He took the GED in Texas at age 15, the day before dropping out of high school for the first time. “My sophomore year I was cooking so much (in Austin), I didn’t have time for school,” Wade said. He went on to culinary school in Portland, Ore.

Wade was drawn to cooking for “the ability to feed myself and gratitude,” he said. “People are pretty happy when they get fed good food. It’s pretty nice to make people happy.”

Josinsky, a graduate of Colchester High School, grew up in a family that called supper supper, not dinner. And so it appears on the Misery Loves Co. menu. (Three cheers!) He and Laura Wade met at a bar in Burlington.

For cooks who have toiled in other people’s kitchens since they were teenagers, owning their own restaurant is “liberating,” Josinsky said.

“It’s us and it comes down to us to make it work and there’s nobody else involved and that’s a really liberating aspect for me,” Josinsky said. “We have to make it work every day.”

To that end, he and Nathaniel Wade work about 85 hours a week, he said.

“It’s also liberating not to be independently wealthy,” Josinsky said. “We definitely don’t have deep pockets. We have to make it work.”

Community support

A localvore fundraising campaign, similar to Kickstarter, brought in contributions in varying amounts from about 350 people, Josinsky said. In return for contributing money to help start the restaurant, donors received items based on their donation — $10 returned a firm handshake; $20 bought a sandwich (a $12 Misery Loves Co. version of a corned beef special is the best sandwich I’ve eaten in this town). Larger amounts traded for things like a cocktail party or a pasta-making class.

“That was awesome, that was huge,” Josinsky said. “It didn’t bring in enough to make it all happen, but the feeling and sentiment was amazing.”

The Josinsky-Wade clan has a following in the local food scene: through past restaurant work, pop-up dinners in various borrowed locations, and a food truck — a 1976 Winnebago. These endeavors, also called Misery Loves Co., preceded the opening of the restaurant.

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“I think we hit something here,” Josinsky said. “I think people have caught up with what we’ve been talking about the last six years in the Burlington area. The concept has been here, it’s just been interrupted by having to get real jobs.”

The other day Eric Rozendaal, owner of Rockville Market Farm in Starksboro, and his family stopped in for lunch. “Hey dudes, how’s it going?” Rozendaal asked, before ordering a pile of sandwiches, fries and cokes in glass bottles.

“I’ve known these guys a long time,” he said. “From food, pigs, hanging out.” He and the Misery crew were talking “nose to tail” before the phrase was common, Rozendaal said.

We had tail, as in a pig’s, the night Glenn and I ate there. This was Glenn’s pick, an $8 winner: a plate of sizzly, salty, fatty nuggets. The tail was braised and deep-fried, before being tossed in vinaigrette with smoked chilis, peanuts and scallions. This arrangement has the marvelous quality of crackling and dissolving in your mouth at once.

I mention Glenn’s pick because eating at Misery Loves Co., in our experience, was an endurance event and a bit of a competition — with each of us gunning for certain menu items. If I outlasted Glenn, I think he beat me on choice.

I regret that Glenn talked me into beets and out of greens. Our meat-heavy meal, I think, needed a plain green salad. Our other lamb sides, fingerling potatoes and cauliflower sauteed with pine nuts and raisins, were excellent complements.

The cheese plate ($8), my choice, came with cheese we both loved and had never had: Timberdoodle from Woodcock Farm. We were disappointed there was only one piece. Here, the competition involved eating most of it. We recommend, also, house-made merguez sausage ($9), served steaming hot with lentils and curry sauce the night we were there.

Misery Loves Co., of course, is a fabulous name for a restaurant — even as it gives a moment’s pause. Like latching onto a slippery sea urchin, either you get it or you don’t. Either way, it is enhanced by a little explanation.

Valentine’s Day is a big night for eating out, and that means restaurant workers are on duty. “We all hated working in restaurants on Valentine’s Day,” Josinsky said. “It tends to be contrived and phony.”

Several years ago, in that spirit, Josinsky and the Wades wanted to throw a Valentine’s Day pop-up dinner and call it Misery Loves Co. The party never happened but the name stuck.

“We kind of look at it as a lifestyle at this point,” Josinsky said. “It’s an approach to living that we embrace here. We listen to rock n roll and we have fun. We take care of ourselves and what we choose to be around. It’s our little approach in Winooski that we hope is catching on.”

We caught on in one supper at Misery Loves Co. “Tumbling Dice” and pig’s tail will do that to you.

Contact Sally Pollak at spollak@burlingtonfree press.com or 660-1859. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/vtpollak. Hear Sally and other Savorvore writers on the Burlington Free Press and Vermont Public Radio collaboration show, VPR Cafe, Sundays at 10:45 a.m.